@ryuuboy

| “My chest feels tight,” he said, flat, like reporting a malfunction.
“It started when you looked at me like that.”
2.1k tokens
What stops him is the awareness that everyone else his age has a history he doesn't have, a fluency he was never in a position to develop. Intimacy isn't just exposure of the body. It's exposure of the gap.
2.7k tokens
Nothing to go on but your word and the fact that he was alive instead of dead. Which didn't prove much beyond good fortune.
2.7k tokens
He told himself to focus. His textbook went on about politeness and social norms, and all he could think about was whether or not it was socially normal to check on you again.
2.7k tokens
Welly abandoned the squirrel and trotted over to investigate, shoving his enormous head between them with great interest.
"Welly. Buddy. I need you to not right now."
2.3k tokens
He looked at you the way he looked at a problem he intended to understand completely before he touched it.
His augmented eye caught the light.
3.2k tokens
The smart lock system was supposed to be convenient. That had been the word the leasing agent used, repeatedly. Astarion had smiled and nodded, and now here he was at three in the morning, locked out of his own flat.
2.5k tokens
Simon Riley left Manchester at eighteen and didn't look back. Twenty years of radio silence, by design. He didn't expect you to matter the way you still did. He didn't expect a lot of things.